She bought item 1 and paid for it. Then she bought item 2 and paid but item 1 was still on the order so she has now paid for item 1 twice and item 2 once.

She then bought item 3 and paid but items 1 and 2 were still on her order so she has now paid for item 1 three times, item 2 twice and item 3 once. This continued for six items!

She paid through Stripe so I refunded all of the duplicate orders. I emailed her after item 3 to tell her what had happened. She didn't respond but she did keep ordering.

I am planning on shipping her order for six items today although I am a bit nervous that she will finally realize what happened and cancel the final payment also...the one that actually paid for all six items.

MY QUESTION IS: what happened, how did the items stay in her cart? They are all OOAK so she, theoretically, shouldn't have been able to add them to her cart a second, third, fourth, etc time.

Has this happened to anyone else? I would like to figure out what to do to avoid this in the future.

I'm not sure how this happened either, but please contact eCRATER right away with all the order numbers. Once you get an answer, it would be helpful if you posted back here to let us know what happened.

I think I managed once for a customer to do that three times. I think the problem was that she was buying so fast that the computer wasn't getting that 15 minutes it needed to realize that the items had been bought. Especially if this was an order via MP so the MP fee will be correct.

Exactly as MoonwishesStore posited, The way my customer purchased, paid, purchased, paid, etc., did not give the site time to clear her cart.

Here is the response I received from eCrater:

Hello Barbara,
Thank you for your email. The items are not removed from the cart when the order is placed. Most buyers won't add on item at a time and then place
multiple orders. It takes a bit of time for the inventory control to remove
the items from the store and this allows multiple purchases prior to the
payment info being received from PayPal or Stripe.

So I will contact my customer and tell her this so that if she orders in the future, she will add all items to the cart before paying

So I will contact my customer and tell her this so that if she orders in the future, she will add all items to the cart before paying Confused

Again, thanks to all!

Offhand, I don't know what you sell, but if most of your inventory is adding about the same weight to an order, you can set up your shipping to give a bit of a discount when someone buys multiple items -- IF everything is purchased all at once. For instance, I use the matrix and one pattern is one shipping amount and two would be slightly more, three a bit more, etc. So rather than having to pay for all 4 items someone is buying and paying four full shipping amounts you can discount your shipping, as the first ounce is always the most expensive and no matter how many items are purchased after that in the same order, you only pay that 30 cent fee on PP or Stripe once. When you look at it that way, you save the customer money, you still get what you need and they are happy.

When my son and DIL got married, we were in OH for the wedding, I checked my email and about passed out. I had someone order 27 patterns from me! The matrix did its thing, PP did their thing, the total for actual shipping cost was $6.21. This was 2011 so Priority was cheaper so I had to chip in a couple of bucks. But I only had that one PP fee instead of $8+ just for that little fee for selling all of them at one time. I cleared over $300 for that order. I was very happy. I would have been very happy anyhow as it was a lovely wedding and we got a lovely new daughter, however, our flight arrangements collapsed. My younger son got home way ahead of us and was scared as to why we weren't back yet (got held up in Philly for 12 hours!). Bless his heart he pulled all those patterns as they had to go out Monday about 10 hours after we walked in the door early Monday morning.

Since I started here, I have tried to never have any shipping be more than the flat rate envelope cost. And it pays in the long run. If someone wants to buy 10 patterns from me, there is a cost saving to them and me and plus I make more by selling more at once. Hope that makes some kind of sense.

I actually do have my shipping set to be based on the weight of the package (using the matrix) and my items vary in weight from 3-8 ounces with the exception of a few larger sets. So when that final order came in with the correct six items, her shipping was only $8.30 Priority (she lives in my town! LOL).

eCrater postage calculator using USPS is really very good once you figure out how to use it. When I first started selling here years ago..I struggled with the matrix a bit but got it worked out.

I have no idea why she ordered/paid each item one at a time, I have never had a buyer do that which is why I couldn't understand what happened.

Wow! 27 patterns...NICE order! And bless your son for having your back when your travel got goofy.

Yes, I agree, reasonable shipping is important. Every now and then, the shipping is calculated higher than actual so I refund...I'm in for making a profit on my little Polly Pockets, not on shipping

Keep the last payment order, and refund the first two payments. You are going to eat a small charge per refund, but luckily this is before the new PP change. Then this kind of behavior will really hurt.